A Thousand Words

Related
Gates in Israel on third leg of Mideast tour
Gates: U.S. committed to maintaining Israel's military edge over neighbors
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--well, you know what they say about pictures, don't you ?

U.S. Will Raise Defense With Israel

U.S. Will Raise Defense With Israel

The United States has agreed to raise the level of defense relations with Israel.

In that context, the Bush administration has dispatched Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Israel, who will arrive tonight for meetings on strategic issues with his counter part, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The Gates visit was said to have signaled the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Israel in wake of an unmanned aerial vehicle upgrade project for China in 2004.

The Pentagon, angered that Israel tried to conceal the project, severed high-level ties, blocked sensitive exports and denied Israel access to the Joint Strike Fighter program. Israel was not believed to have completed the Harpy UAV upgrade for Beijing.

In September 2005, Israel and the United States agreed to consult on proposed arms exports by the Jewish state. Israel also pledged to make its export approval process transparent, legislation that has not yet been approved by the Knesset.

Posted Apr 17, 2007 06:15 PM PST
Category: ISRAEL

Note that Israel appears to have received precisely what it wanted, but the legislation to make its export approval transparent has not yet been passed by the Knesset.

The alleged "concern" about the US selling advanced F-15 and F-16 fighters to Saudi Arabia is simply a bargaining chip with which Israel hopes to gain more advantage in the deal.

US Defense Secretary to Visit Israel to Sell Weapons

_{Last update - 02:04 12/04/2007}

U.S. defense secretary to visit Israel

_{By Shmuel Rosner}

WASHINGTON - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit Israel next week for a series of meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz on the strategic situation in the Middle East.

The visit, scheduled for April 17, is the first time a U.S. Defense Secretary will be visiting Israel in eight years.

American sources told Haaretz on Tuesday that the visit was decided and a date finalized, though an official announcement on the matter has not been made public.

The visit, which comes about a month after Peretz visited Washington, will also deal with bilateral defense ties between the U.S. and Israel.

Gates was appointed Defense Secretary less than six months ago, replacing Donald Rumsfeld. A planned visit of Rumsfeld to Israel in June 2006 was canceled last minute.

The last U.S. Defense Secretary to have visited Israel was William Cohen, who came in 1999, during the second Clinton administration.

The Gates visit is critical to helping heal the rift in the relations between the U.S. and Israel defense establishments, following the crisis that occured over Israeli's sale of defense equipment to China. In 2005, the U.S. defense establishment placed severe sanctions on Israel, which included restrictions on defense-related sales, joint projects and exchanges of information on advanced weapons systems.

Gates' main mission at this point is to oversea the renewed effort to stabilize Iraq, in light of President George Bush's decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country.

American sources told Haaretz yesterday that Gates is interested in hearing what the Israeli leadership thinks about the situation in Iraq. He is also planning to discuss tactics for dealing with the IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) employed by terrorists in Iraq, which have taken a toll on U.S. forces.

Among the bilateral issues to be discussed is Israel's wish to be included once more in the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) project for the new American strike fighter - from which it was excluded following the China crisis. Senior Israeli officials argued in their recent meetings with American counterparts that it is advisable to include some Israeli sub-systems in the new aircraft. However, the Americans were adamant that they do not intend to make further changes in the design and development of the aircraft.

The Israelis said they raised some of the lessons of the Lebanon war in conversations with their American colleagues and recommended that these should be studied before the JSF development program is finalized.

Another issue of interest to Gates and Israel, and a subject covered extensively last week by the New York Times, is Israel's opposition to the sale of advanced weapons systems to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.

The American defense establishment is determined to sell these systems to Arab states and will seek a compromise formula in order to prevent supporters of Israel in Congress from foiling the deal. Israel has also expressed interest in procuring a number of advanced systems from the U.S. and it is possible that Washington will agree to reconsider the sale of these to Israel in exchange for an easing of Israeli objections to the Saudi deal.

Gates humiliates Israeli war minister

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 14:39:50 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reportedly wanted to allot only 20 minutes to his meeting this week with Israeli war minister Amir Peretz.

According to the online edition of the Israeli daily Haaretz, the use of a simultaneous translator, as requested by Peretz, would have effectively halved the conversation time to 10 minutes.

Pentagon officials agreed to extend the duration of the meeting only after Israeli officials explained that such briefness constituted a slap in Peretz's face.

A spokesman for Peretz told Haaretz that the session would last 45 minutes, which he called a "respectable length of time."

Officials at the Zionist regime's embassy in Washington, D.C., meanwhile, said the Gates-Peretz meeting was scheduled to last 30 minutes. In response to a formal request for information, the Pentagon said Gates would announce the scheduled duration the day before the meeting, which is set for Tuesday.

Sources in Washington say Gates initially sought only a short meeting with Peretz because he did not have any matters that required extended discussion.

HRE/BG

Fears grow over Iran

February 23, 2007

Tom Baldwin in Washington and Philip Webster, Political Editor

Tony Blair has declared himself at odds with hawks in the US Administration by saying publicly for the first time that it would be wrong to take military action against Iran. The Prime Minister’s comments came hours before the UN’s nuclear watchdog raised the stakes in the West’s showdown with Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran had expanded its nuclear programme, defying UN demands for it to be suspended. Hundreds of uranium-spinning centrifuges in an underground hall are expected to be increased to thousands by May when Iran moves to “industrial-scale production”. Senior British government sources have told The Times that they fear President Bush will seek to “settle the Iranian question through military means” next year, before the end of his second term if he concludes that diplomacy has failed. “He will not want to leave it unresolved for his successor,” said one.

But there are deep fissures within the US Administration. Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, who has previously called for direct talks with Tehran, is said to be totally opposed to military action.

Although he has dispatched a second US aircraft carrier to the Gulf, he is understood to believe that airstrikes would inflame Iranian public opinion and hamper American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. One senior adviser to Mr Gates has even stated privately that military action could lead to Congress impeaching Mr Bush.

Does Putin Not Have a Point?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 02/13/2007 ET

"A soft answer turneth away wrath," teaches Proverbs 1:15.

Our new secretary of defense, Roberts Gates, seems familiar with the verse. For his handling of Saturday's wintry blast from Vladimir Putin at the Munich security conference was masterful.

"As an old Cold Warrior, one of yesterday's speeches almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time," said Gates, adding, "Almost." A former director of the CIA, Gates went on to identify with Putin: "I have, like your second speaker yesterday ... a career in the spy business. And I guess old spies have a habit of blunt speaking.

"However, I have been to re-education camp, spending the last four-and-a-half years as a university president and dealing with faculty. And as more than a few university presidents have learned in recent years, when it comes to faculty it is either 'be nice' or 'be gone.'"

Gates added he would be going to Moscow to talk with the old KGB hand, who will be retiring as Russia's president around the time President Bush goes home to Crawford. Excellent.

For one of the historic blunders of this administration has been to antagonize and alienate Russia, the winning of whose friendship was a signal achievement of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And one of the foreign policy imperatives of this nation is for statesmanship to repair the damage.

What did we do to antagonize Russia?

When the Cold War ended, we seized upon our "unipolar moment" as the lone superpower to seek geopolitical advantage at Russia's expense.

Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia's front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.

Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.

Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.

Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?

Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations and "human rights" institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics and Russia herself.

U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.

Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.

These are Putin's grievances. Does he not have a small point?

Joe Lieberman denounced Putin's "Cold War rhetoric." But have we not been taking what cannot unfairly be labeled Cold War actions?

How would we react if China today brought Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela into a military alliance, convinced Mexico to sell oil to Beijing and bypass the United States, and began meddling in the affairs of Central America and Caribbean countries to effect the electoral defeat of regimes friendly to the United States? How would we react to a Russian move to put anti-missile missiles on Greenland?

Gates says we have been through one Cold War and do not want another. But it is not Moscow moving a military alliance right up to our borders or building bases and planting anti-missile systems in our front and back yards.

Why are we doing this? This country is not going to go to war with Russia over Estonia. With our Army "breaking" from two insurgencies, how would we fight? By bombing Moscow and St. Petersburg?

Just as we deluded ourselves into believing this war would be a "cakewalk," that democracy would break out across the Middle East, that we would be beloved in Baghdad, so America today has undertaken commitments, dating to the Cold War and since, we do not remotely have the resources or will to fulfill. We are living in a world of self-delusion.

Somewhere in this presidential campaign, someone has to bring us back to earth. The halcyon days of American Empire are over.

Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)

Those Thoughtful Iranians

From the Telegraph;

Iran kindly provided Robert Gates with weapons with English markings rather than in Farsi or Arabic.



Related
How the supposedly nefarious and cunning Iranians have been so stupid as to leave identifying information on the IED's Defense Secretary Gates is claiming were supplied to Iraq.
How the Iran Evidence Works

Here we go. World war at hand. Gates says United States has evidence of Iranian involvement in helping insurgents in Iraq

Recall the U.S. has double agents, Special Forces, and their own favorite terrorist group, the MEK, as well as the U.K . Joint Support Group operating in Iran. How easy it would be for them to aquire Iranian weapons and plant them in Iraq and say , "See! Smoking gun! Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!

Related
UK Telegraph Reveals Brit Terrorist Ops in Iraq
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You can trust the Bush gang's word, right? Douglas Feith is cookin' that intel. A real dual patriot, reich, er, right?

Related
The war is illegal
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SEVILLE, Spain -- Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for militants there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday.

Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found," that point to Iran.

At the same time, however, he said he was somewhat surprised that recent raids by coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq swept up some Iranians.

Just last week, Gates said that U.S. military officers in Baghdad were planning to brief reporters on what is known about Iranian involvement in Iraq but that he and other senior administration officials had intervened to delay the briefing in order to assure that the information provided was accurate.

Speaking to reporters at a defense ministers conference here, Gates said Friday, "I don't think there was surprise that the Iranians were actually involved, I think there was surprise we actually picked up some."

He and other U.S. officials have said for some time that Iranians, and possibly the government of Iran, have been providing weapons technology, and possibly some explosives to Iraqi insurgents.

The improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been a leading killer of U.S. forces in Iraq, where more than 3,000 servicemen and women have died in the nearly four-year-old war.

The Bush administration has promised a detailed accounting of allegations that Iran is contributing to violence or instability in Iraq but has not yet released that dossier. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials have faced skeptical questions from lawmakers about the strength of the evidence and the parallels to administration claims about Iraq before the 2003 invasion.

"Under the circumstances and given the attention that this has gotten we want to make sure that we provide you the best information possible, but do so in a way that doesn't compromise sources and methods, that doesn't make it harder for us to deal with the situation that's there," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday.

Gates, who is attending his first NATO defense ministers meeting, said Iran is "very much involved in providing either the technology or the weapons themselves for these explosively formed projectiles. Now they don't represent a big percentage of the IED attacks but they're extremely lethal."

Gates said the raids combined with the movement of an additional U.S. aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf have created a stir, but said the Bush administration has no intention of attacking Iran.

Meanwhile, the defense secretary has been getting a lukewarm response here to his plea for allies to send more troops and aid for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

Gates said the U.S. made no additional commitments for more troops of its own. He recently extended the tour of a brigade in Afghanistan, where the U.S. has 27,000 troops -- the most since the war began in 2001.

U.S. and NATO military leaders in recent months have repeatedly called on alliance members to send reinforcements and lift restrictions on where their troops can serve. On Thursday, Gates secured smaller offers from some nations, but he met resistance from key allies.

France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.

"When the Russians were in Afghanistan, they had 100,000 soldiers there and they did not win," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters.

The meeting in southern Spain did produce some offers, however.

Lithuania, which already has 130 troops in Afghanistan, offered to send an unspecified number of special forces, helping to fill a key shortfall.

Germany says it will provide six Tornado reconnaissance jets but not significantly augment its 3,000 troops in the north. The Italian government said it would send a much-needed transport plane and some unmanned surveillance aircraft, but it is struggling to secure parliamentary backing for the finances needed to maintain a contingent of 1,950.

Spain also said it would send four unmanned planes and more instructors to help the Afghan army.

Gates said that after nearly five years at war with the Taliban, this spring will be critical because it could give the people of the country more hope.

"Each spring for the last several years, the Taliban have been more aggressive and there has been an increasing level of violence," he said. "There is a consensus on the part of the ministers that it is important that this year we knock the Taliban back."

The end of winter has traditionally brought an upsurge in attacks by Taliban militants in Afghanistan. U.S. commanders have already predicted that this spring will be even more violent than last year, when a record number of attacks included nearly 140 suicide bombings.

About 15,000 of the American troops are serving in the NATO-led force, which now totals about 36,000, while the other 12,000 are special operations forces or are training Afghan troops.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Bush Bamboozles Democrats Again

consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
January 27, 2007

As Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates joins in baiting Iraq War critics for supposedly aiding the enemy, the Democrats have been taught once more the value of handing a bipartisan olive branch to George W. Bush.

In December 2006, ignoring warnings from former CIA officers who had worked with Gates, Senate Democrats embraced his nomination to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. They fawned over Gates at a one-day hearing, spared the former CIA director any tough questions, and then unanimously endorsed him.

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and others hailed Gates’s “candor” when he acknowledged the obvious, that the United States wasn’t winning the war in Iraq, a position that even Bush subsequently embraced.

In December, the “conventional wisdom” was that Bush would bend to the troop-drawdown recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and that Gates – as a former member of the ISG – would guide the President toward disengagement from Iraq.

But in rushing Gates’s nomination through with only pro forma hearings, the Democrats sacrificed a rare opportunity to demand answers from the Bush administration about its war policy at a time when the White House wanted something from the Democrats, i.e. the quick confirmation of Gates.

At minimum, the Democrats could have used an extended confirmation hearing to explore, in detail, Gates’s views about the military challenges in the Middle East and ascertain what he knew about Bush’s future plans.

They also could have taken time to examine exactly who Gates is, whether he is the right man to oversee the complex conflicts in the Middle East, and what his real record was in handling regional issues in the past.

Gates allegedly played important but still-secret roles in controversial U.S. policies toward Iran and Iraq in the 1980s. In addition, former CIA officers have criticized Gates for “politicizing” the CIA’s intelligence analysis as a top CIA official in the 1980s.

Some of the CIA institutional and personnel changes that Gates implemented led to the CIA’s malleability in the face of White House pressure over Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction in 2002-03, former CIA officials said. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Secret World of Robert Gates."]

So, was Gates a closet neoconservative ideologue hiding behind Boy Scout looks and mild manners? Or was he more a yes man who would bend to the will of his superiors? His record could be interpreted either way. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Robert Gates: Realist or Neo-con?"]

But the Democrats politely evaded these thorny questions.

Rumsfeld’s Lament

The Senate Armed Services Committee also could have called Rumsfeld to explain his Nov. 6 memo which contained recommendations for U.S. troop redeployments similar to those suggested by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania. Two days after that memo was sent to Bush, the President fired Rumsfeld and replaced him with Gates.

The Democrats could have demanded that Rumsfeld explain what had led to his change in thinking and whether his “going wobbly” was the precipitating fact in his firing. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Gates Hearing Has New Urgency."]

By extending the hearings a few days, they also could have asked Rumsfeld and Gates about the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations.

Under White House pressure, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner, R-Virginia, scheduled Gates’s one-day hearing the day before former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton released the ISG’s report listing 79 recommendations to address the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq.

Though then still in the Senate minority, committee Democrats had the power to demand fuller hearings. But they were desperate to demonstrate their bipartisanship and their generosity in victory, extending Bush an olive branch and hoping that Bush would respond in kind.

Immediately after the perfunctory hearing, Gates got unanimous approval from the Armed Services Committee and the next day won confirmation from the full Senate. He was opposed by only two right-wing Republican senators.

In the seven weeks since then, it’s become clear that Bush bamboozled the Democrats again. The “conventional wisdom” of early December turned out to be all wrong.

Bush dashed the Democrats’ hopes for a bipartisan strategy on Iraq by unceremoniously junking the Baker-Hamilton recommendations.

Instead of moving to drawdown U.S. forces, he chose to escalate by adding more than 20,000 new troops. Instead of negotiating with Iran and Syria as the ISG wanted, Bush sent aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and authorized the killing of Iranian agents inside Iraq.

Instead of building on the bipartisan approach of the Iraq Study Group, Bush pronounced himself the “decision-maker” and signaled his surrogates to step up accusations that the Democrats were aiding and abetting the terrorists.

Gates’s Thanks

For his part, Gates has shown his thanks to the Democrats for his cakewalk confirmation by speeding up deployment of the new troops even as Democrats struggle to fashion a non-binding resolution opposing the escalation.

Gates also picked up Bush’s favorite cudgel to pound the Democrats for supposedly helping the enemy.

“Any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon on Jan. 26. “I’m sure that that’s not the intent behind the resolutions, but I think it may be the effect.”

Now, as Bush rushes more troops to Iraq, the Democrats are left to debate whether the non-binding resolution on the “surge” should refer to it as an “escalation” or, as some Republicans would prefer, an “augmentation.”

Though vowing stronger action in the future, many Democrats already have ruled out blocking new funds for the war because that would open them to more accusations of disloyalty. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment “off the table,” too.

So, the Democrats are again learning a hard lesson they should have mastered years ago, that this breed of Republicans views Democrats as suckers who can be easily seduced with a few sweet but empty words like “bipartisanship” and “comity.”

In December, the Democrats voluntarily sacrificed a golden opportunity to use the Gates nomination to force an examination of Bush’s war strategy. At that moment, they held real leverage over the administration to get documents and other needed information.

Instead, they engaged in wishful thinking, opted to be nice and are now finding what their gestures of bipartisanship got them.

[To see Consortiumnews.com's new archive on Gates-related articles, click here.]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. To comment to us by e-mail, click here.

Iran shoots down U.S. spy drone amid growing military pressure

www.chinaview.cn 2007-01-17 08:41:25

Special report: Iran Nuclear Crisis by Liang Youchangrob TEHRAN, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Iranian troops have shot down a U.S. pilotless spy plane recently, an Iranian lawmaker announced on Tuesday as the Islamic Republic was facing increasing military pressure from its arch rival -- the United States. The aircraft was brought down when it was trying to cross the borders "during the last few days," Seyed Nezam Mola Hoveizeh, a member of the parliament, was quoted by the local Fars News Agency as saying. The lawmaker gave no exact date of the shooting-down or any other details about the incident, but he said that "the United States sent such spy drones to the region every now and then." SECOND U.S. AIRCRAFT CARRIER The announcement came amid reports that the United States is increasingly flexing its muscles to counter Iran's growing regional assertiveness and put more pressure on Tehran over its controversial nuclear programs. It was reported Tuesday that a second U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, will arrive in the Middle East in about one month, the first time since the U.S.-led Iraq war in 2003 that the United States will have two carrier battle groups in the region. The USS John C. Stennis, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier that has a capacity for 5,000 sailors, is scheduled to sail Tuesday from its home port of Bremerton, Washington, said Commander Kevin Aandahl of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain. In about one month, the USS John C. Stennis, including an air wing of more than 80 tactical aircraft, will join Fifth Fleet forces that includes aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. "This demonstrates our resolve to do what we can to bring security and stability to the region ... (and) dissuade others from acting counter to our national interest," Aandahl said. U.S. President George W. Bush announced earlier this month that the United States was taking other steps to beef up security of Iraq and protect U.S. interests in the Middle East, such as sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Gulf and deploying Patriot air defense systems to the region. HARSH REMARKS AGAINST IRAN The latest move comes just one day after new U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made harsh remarks against Iran, indicating that Iran's perception of U.S. vulnerability in the region was part of the reason the Pentagon sent the aircraft carrier and the Patriot missiles. "The Iranians are acting in a very negative way in many respects," Gates told reporters on Monday after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels. "The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in a position to press us in many ways," Gates said. Gates also said that the deployment of Patriot air defense systems and the second aircraft carrier in the Gulf region indicated the Bush administration's "reaffirmation" of the importance of the region, adding that stability in the region is in "long-term, strategic, vital interests" of the United States. The United States accuses Iran of using its influence to meddle in the region, especially in Lebanon and Shiite-majority Iraq, besides seeking a nuclear weapon, which has been rejected by Iran. In an interview with Fox News earlier the month, Vice President Dick Cheney said that Iran was "fishing in troubled waters" in Iraq, adding "we think it's very important that they keep their folks at home." Meanwhile, U.S. forces are still holding five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq last week, who the United States says have been connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that arms insurgents but Tehran says are merely consular staff. In a show of defiance, an Iranian government spokesman said on Monday that the country was pushing ahead with its plan to install at least 3,000 centrifuges for nuclear fuel production.

Flailing About, Blindly

Count Robert Gates as among the masters of the obvious: in a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, he informed Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer that the Taliban threat will grow in 2007. This meeting took place in the context of calling for “broad international support” for the Afghanistan mission, even though those calls have been made since at least 2004.

At least it’s finally getting some attention, most recently of Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton. She just completed separate meetings with Karzai and Musharraf; we’ll see if anything useful comes from them.

Meanwhile, down south in Helmand, some intense fighting cleared the way for USAID contractors to continue construction work on the Kajaki Dam, which is meant to provide electricity to nearly 2 million people.

What a tremendously bad idea. Infrastructure is not the problem in Afghanistan, it is the symptom—of a failed occupation, a failed national police force, a failed policy at the highest levels of both governments. The U.S. was dumb to assume the Northern Alliance warlords wouldn’t give up power voluntarily, just as it was dumb to assume that the Taliban wouldn’t regroup in the free areas in Pakistan. Worse is siphoning off troops from Afghanistan to plug holes in Iraq. Karzai, on his part, hasn’t been the best enemy of corruption, though in his defense neither has NATO.

It is a society-wide, society-deep problem. Building a dam is a nice gesture, but it is merely the continuation of the failed “let’s be nice and hope they like us” policy, in which NATO troops clear out a local Taliban stronghold, chasing them into the mountains, and try to hand out public works projects and candy to win “hearts and minds.” The locals are smarter: they know the militants aren’t really gone, and that it usually only takes until nightfall for their return, often with new violence and terror should anyone cooperate with the Westerners.

As I said before, it is fundamentally a crisis of manpower. There are not enough troops to properly secure the country, and there are not enough troops to hold territory once it has been cleared. This has resulted in heart-breaking cases like Panjwai, in which not even those public works projects have materialized.

The very lack of security and control is what is causing these failures. Upgrading a dam is wonderful, but when NATO rolls through and bulldozes your orchard to build a road the Taliban then use to re-occupy your village, gratitude toward the West is probably one of the last things on your mind.

This leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that we don’t really seem to know what we’re doing in Afghanistan. Policies and actions clash with rhetoric, and all seem to change by the week. NATO responds by throwing money at the locals, and USAID throw its resources into building dams instead of social or political institutions. And everyone is pointing their fingers at each other, refusing to take responsibility for the fact that, in reality, this entire half of the country is slipping through their fingers.

Tags: Afghanistan, NATO.
Posted by Joshua Foust on January 15th, 2007
Permalink | Trackback | Comments: 2

Ominous Signs of a Wider War

by MICHAEL T. KLARE

[posted online on January 8, 2007]

On January 5 Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he was replacing Gen. John Abizaid as commander of the Central Command (Centcom)--the body responsible for oversight of all US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the greater Middle East--with Adm. Richard Fallon, currently the commander of the Pacific Command (Pacom). Fallon is one of several senior officers recently appointed by Gates to oversee the new strategy for Iraq now being shaped by President Bush.

The choice of Fallon to replace Abizaid was highly unusual in several respects. First, this is a lateral move for the admiral, not a promotion: As head of Pacom, Fallon commanded a larger force than he will oversee at Centcom, and one over which he will exercise less direct control since all combat operations in Iraq will be under the supervision of Gen. Dave Petraeus, the recently announced replacement for Gen. George Casey as commander of all US and allied forces. Second, and more surprising, Fallon is a Navy man, with experience in carrier operations, while most of Centcom's day-to-day work is on the ground, in the struggle against insurgents and warlords in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Part of the explanation for this move, of course, is a desire by the White House to sweep away bitter ground-force commanders like Abizaid and Casey who had opposed an increase in US troops in Iraq and argued for shifting greater responsibility for the fighting to Iraq forces, thereby permitting a gradual American withdrawal. "The Baghdad situation requires more Iraqi troops," not more Americans, Abizaid said in a recent interview with the New York Times. For this alone, Abizaid had to go.

But there's more to it. Abizaid, who is of Lebanese descent and served a tour of duty with UN forces in Lebanon, has come to see the need for a regional solution to the crisis in Iraq--one that inevitably requires some sort of engagement with Iran and Syria, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group. "You have to internationalize the problem, you have to attack it diplomatically, geo-strategically," he told the Times. "You just can't apply a microscope on a particular problem in downtown Baghdad...and say that somehow or another, if you throw enough military forces at it, you are going to solve the broader issues in the region of extremism."

If engagement with Iran and Syria was even remotely on the agenda, Abizaid is exactly the man you'd want on the job at Centcom overseeing US forces and strategy in the region. But if that's not on the agenda, if you're thinking instead of using force against Iran and/or Syria, then Admiral Fallon is exactly the man you'd want at Centcom.

Why? Because combined air and naval operations are his forté. Fallon began his combat career as a Navy combat flyer in Vietnam, and he served with carrier-based forces for twenty-four years after that. He commanded a carrier battle wing during the first Gulf War in 1991 and led the naval group supporting NATO operations during the Bosnia conflict four years later. More recently, Fallon served as vice chief of naval operations before becoming the head of Pacom in 2005. All this means that he is primed to oversee an air, missile and naval attack on Iran, should the President give the green light for such an assault--and the fact that Fallon has been moved from Pacom to Centcom means that such a move is very much on Bush's mind.

The recent replacement of General Abizaid by Admiral Fallon, along with other recent moves announced by the Defense Secretary, should give deep pause to anyone concerned about the prospect of escalation in the Iraq War. Contrary to the advice given by the Iraq Study Group, Bush appears to be planning for a wider war--with much higher risk of catastrophic failure--not a gradual and dignified withdrawal from the region.

Michael T. Klare is the defense correspondent of The Nation and a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College. His latest book is Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum.

Cannon fodder at Christmas time

Thursday, December 21, 2006

By Gabriele Zamparini

Santa Claus Bush is preparing to deliver his special Christmas’ gift: “We do need to increase our troops”

The Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon unanimously disagreed but hey, do you want to question the Clown in Chief who hid into the Texas National Guard (and even there he was an AWOL) to avoid to fight in the Vietnam war? [That’s probably the only good thing this scam has done in all his life, at least he didn’t kill anybody, THEN!]

Even war criminal Powell – the clown of the UN show just before the invasion – “said the U.S. Army is ‘about broken’ from the Iraq conflict and cast doubt on whether the military could or should boost the number of troops in the country. ‘There really are no additional troops'’ to send, Powell said on CBS's ‘Face the Nation’ program. ‘The current active Army is not large enough and the Marine Corps is not large enough for the kinds of missions they are being asked to perform’."

But the propaganda machine is working full time.

On Thursday he [Defense Secretary Robert Gates] had breakfast with ordinary soldiers to sound out their views on troop levels, a timeline for training Iraqis, sectarian leanings in the Iraqi security forces and the "caliber and discipline" of Iraqi soldiers and their military leaders.

"Sir, I think we need to just keep doing what we're doing," Specialist Jason Glenn told Gates. "I really think we need more troops here. With more presence on the ground, more troops might hold them (the insurgents) off long enough to where we can get the Iraqi army trained up."

No soldier present said U.S. forces should be brought home, and none said current troop levels were adequate, as some commanders have argued.

A young US soldier’s mother recently wrote: “Two weeks ago he called by satellite phone, awakening Amy and me in the dead of the night. Machine gun fire was all around him, the sound of war filling our ears and hearts with grief and fear of loss. (…) He says that this war cannot be won! He has no faith in the politicians who sent him there.”

In Basra, the greatest liar since the times of Pinocchio met the young British troops he has sent to kill and torture people nothing had done to them and their country. Once again the butcher of London brainwashed the youth “Our country and countries like it are having to rediscover what it means to fight for what we believe in. All over the world the same struggle is going on and if we don't stand up and fight for the people of tolerance and moderation who want to live together, whatever their fate, then the people of hatred and sectarianism will triumph."

We must take much more care of our youth and not allow this gang of pedophiles to abuse and send them to foreign countries as cannon fodder. Those who have their sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan should read A letter to an American G.I. written by an Iraqi woman. This letter would be the most important Christmas gift for your children. Send it to them!

Could Bush Start Another War?

“If the king attacks Persia, he will destroy a great empire.” – Delphic Oracle

All the news is that despite growing antiwar sentiment among the public and the establishment, Bush has decided to reject the major recommendations of the Baker panel and continue to settle for nothing less than total “victory” in Iraq, that he has turned back to the dark heart of the War Party, the American Enterprise Institute, for a plan to win and that more troops and ships are headed to the region.

Everyone outside AEI seems to agree that the chances for his “victory” of a multiethnic, America-friendly, democratic Iraqi state have long since expired. The Baker panel avoided using the term at all. And as investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss explained to me last week, the US is backing the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) death squad leaders because they are the only ones (besides some of the Kurds in the autonomous North) who want – need – the US to stay. This is hardly the “road to victory” as it has been defined by the President.

But Bush can’t stop now. He figures his legacy as a disgrace to America and all mankind can be postponed or perhaps somehow even reversed if he could have just a little more time.

Time for what? Could it be that Bush truly intends to carry out the full neoconservative program in the Middle East, complete with more regime changes?

Could spreading his most spectacular failure to Iran and Syria make Iraq seem merely a “catastrophic success“? Are even Bush and Cheney stupid enough to think an air war against Iran will accomplish anything other than forcing their withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, pushing their rebellious populace back into the arms of the Mullahs, driving the price of oil over $200 a barrel and beginning a brand new war in Iraq against the Iran-friendly Shia whom the U.S. has spent hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars installing in power?

Could Bush, whose approval ratings remain in the 30s, initiate an aggressive war without authorization from Congress? Could he claim that the authorization for the war in Iraq was all the authority he needed?

Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh seem to think so. On December 14th Democracy Now! replayed the audio of their October 16, 2006 appearance at the Ethical Culture Society.

They emphasize the role of the communist cult Mujahideen-e-Khalq – once Saddam’s loyal terrorists, now “ours” – in the early stages of war against Iran and the then-recent – and now recent again – news of U.S. Navy ships, including minesweepers, being sent to the Persian Gulf region. Ritter also explained that the American people have already accepted Bush’s false premise that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that the U.S. must not allow it to be successful.

But, as Hersh reported in the New Yorker’s November issue, the CIA’s new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran says that they have no evidence at all of a secret weapons program. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has had full access to Iran’s nuclear program, has reported all along that there is “no indication” that Iran has diverted nuclear technology to any other purpose beyond their declared and monitored electricity program, a program which they have an “inalienable right” to under the NPT.

According to Ritter and Hersh, the Israelis don’t have any more evidence than the U.S. does, and it does not matter. In the eyes of right-wing Likudnik crazies like Benjamin Netanyahu and his ex-communist, Israel-First, neocon buddies in the U.S., any nuclear technology in the hands of the Iranians is tantamount to a ready capacity to “wipe Israel off the map.” The fact that the ability to enrich uranium to the grade required to generate electricity (around 3.6% U-235) does not equal the ability to enrich it to weapons grade (well over 90% U-235) – especially in the presence of IAEA inspectors and video equipment – is irrelevant to them.

It has been reported, first by Philip Giraldi, then by Hersh, Larisa Alexandrovna and Col. Sam Gardiner (ret.), that Bush has considered using real nukes on Iran’s pretend ones. While it seems inconceivable, Iran’s Natanz facility is buried deep underground, and we know how concerned Bush is with getting things right the first time.

It seems the only way he can imagine to take one last shot at greatness is to compound his mistake by 1,000 times.

Perhaps the question is whether Israel will start a war in Syria as a back door to the expansion of America’s war to Iran, or will the U.S. simply fake another Gulf of Tonkin provocation in the Indian Ocean and hit Syria second?

Even if Iran did have nuclear weapons, it would still be none of America’s business. They do not have the rocket technology to deliver them here, nor would they be likely to share their prize with terrorists. Nuclear bombs all come with a “return address.” And let’s not forget that back in 2003, they offered to give the US everything.

Israel has at least 400 nuclear bombs, a fully capable conventional military and can protect itself just fine. They don’t need the U.S. for their defense, but for aggression against threats that do not really exist.

Even Robert Gates, our new secretary of “defense” admitted to Congress that the only reason Iran would want a nuke is that they are surrounded by powers with nukes.

Robert Parry reports that Bush, Blair and Olmert are already planning for more war in the new year. The Iranians seem to have waited too long to get their act together. If they had withdrawn from the NPT and started harvesting plutonium the way North Korea did, instead of throwing their books wide open to the UN and trying to go along, they’d have a nuclear deterrent by now.

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Failure in Iraq? We've Already Failed

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security

"Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for decades to come," Robert M. Gates said yesterday upon taking the oath to be Secretary of Defense.

Public service I guess is about ruined holidays and long hours, but as Bob Gates starts his exhausting marathon of briefings and meetings, will somebody tell this supposedly savvy Washington operator that the United States has already failed?

Gates has pledged to rely on the uniformed military's "clear-eyed advice" - his second mission is to repair civil-military relations - but after six years and three generations of four stars losing the Rumsfeld war, can the military step-up to the plate and reach beyond its honor bound compulsion to take the next hill to tell the new Secretary the honest truth: We long ago failed.
Train Iraqi forces. It sounds so reasonable, like "diplomacy" with Iran and Syria or Palestinian-Israeli peace, gosh darn, why didn't we just think of it earlier?
Here are some bullet points for the new Secretary:

• We've been trying for three years: From Lt. Gen. Dave Petraeus' Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) - remember that organization in 2004? - through today's training "surge" already underway, we've been there.

• Iraq's armed forces and police are no where closer today to being in a state to be trained to be a dispassionate professional force. In fact, there are further away: The institutions are merely a reflection of the country -- disorganized, sectarian, and corrupt. We, the U.S. military, moreover, have exaggerated the capabilities of Iraqi army and police forces.

• The American military is also not up to the task: Troops are exhausted, they remain culturally weak and distant from Iraqi political, social and religious realities, there are even insufficient translators and specialists more than five years after Sept. 11.

• Embedding is a recipe for disaster: American soldiers will become implicated and embroiled in human rights abuses and even major crimes committed by Iraqi forces. Who wants to put American troops into boiling pots?

The President might be able to swallow the Iraq Study Group's recommendation to increased American embedded trainers from the now paltry 3,000 to 4,000, and all of Washington can agree on a new training emphasis, but the missing ingredient here remains Iraq.

General after General, bureaucrat after bureaucrat will tell the new Secretary this week and next how an additional 20,000 to 30,000 will be deployed, how they are being prepared stateside, which states they will come from, how many Iraqi units are level one, level two, level three, which Iraqi leaders and units are considered the best, where the U.S. embeds will go, how they will be fed and commanded. There will be the ubiquitous stop light charts displaying the state of the program and the war: Green on preparations at Ft. Riley, Kansas; Yellow with regard to Iraqi cooperation; Red on the state of current violence.

It is all tactical talk, all details.

Will anyone get beyond the view that "we have to succeed" to actually ask the question as to whether it is possible or likely?

And that's where the American failure in Iraq already comes in: In the Islamic world, the United States military has already been shown to be vulnerable. The bad guys have invented improvised explosive devices, just as Hezbollah in Lebanon made clever use of anti-tank missiles against Israeli ground forces, displaying innovation and putting the hurt on U.S. forces. In other words, short of decimating the insurgents and the militias and the terrorists in an all-out renewed war, which isn't going to happen, what has already happened has left behind an image and a legacy that withdrawal won't make worse.

My guess is that given years, and allowing for 700 American deaths and 10,000 serious injuries annually, the United States could turn things around. Get it? There is no timeline because there is no timeline.

Do we think in all these briefings that the military can get beyond the details of the NEW training program to say it can't be done in 2007 or even 2008? I don't say this merely to suggest that there is some secret timeline that has to parallel the upcoming presidential election: the truth is that the American people demand action and change sooner. There just isn't a Power Point solution in Iraq that can satisfy what the people want.

So we have this palpable mood change in the Pentagon, as senior military leaders look forward to breaking the painful and emasculating chain that tied them to the last Secretary of Defense. The sense is that the era of the put-down and arrogance is over, that advice will at least be sought if not heeded, that the cold eye of reality will replace the starry eyed ideology.

I have a lot of friends in uniform, and I have my own favorites - smart, straightforward, savvy Generals and Admirals who have seen it all - and I have no doubt that they can step up to the plate. But can they see the truth beyond their can-do impulse? I sure hope so. Otherwise it's déjà vu all over again.

By William M. Arkin December 19, 2006; 8:39 AM ET

New Pimp for the Bush Occupations

Dec 19, 2006

By Ron Fullwood

"Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for decades to come." --Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at swearing-in


Out with the old Defense chief, in with the new, and, everything is as it was. At least, the posturing and rhetoric remains the same. Watching Rumsfeld exit his job with pageantry usually reserved for victors and conquering heroes, it would serve this White House-in-denial if we somehow forgot that neither historic deployment of our military forces, in Afghanistan or Iraq, managed to come anywhere close to accomplishing any of the goals the Bush regime claimed would make our nation more secure in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

Yet, there he was, standing beside the President and Vice-President of the United States in front of an honors ceremony -- reveling in Bush's praise for "racing down smoke-filled hallways to the crash site, so he could help rescue workers pull the victims from the rubble" on 9-11 -- instead of before a tribunal, being made to account for the hundreds of thousands of innocents caught in the way of his "shock and awe" campaigns, and to account for those held captive and tortured in the new gulags of his dual occupations.

"Under Secretary Rumsfeld's leadership," Bush proclaimed, "U.S. and coalition forces launched one of the most innovative military campaigns in the history of modern warfare, sending Special Operations forces into Afghanistan . . . On his watch," Bush said, "the United States military helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a watershed event in the story of freedom."

There was nothing "innovative" at all about charging into Afghanistan -- "to link up with anti-Taliban fighters, to ride with them on horseback," as Bush bragged; cornering bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then cutting-and running from that hunt to divert the bulk of our nation's defenses to Iraq, to "draw a line in the sand," as the terrorists escaped into the mountains of Afghanistan. There has been nothing "innovative" about the five years of freedom the terror suspects have been gifted with by that diversion in Iraq. In fact, there is nothing innovative at all about invading and occupying Afghanistan or Iraq, overthrowing their governments, and installing weak and compliant replacements. Both Britain and the former Soviet Union eventually abandoned their attempts to militarily dominate these nations in the past, victim to their own fatal overreaches.

There has been no "democracy" established under the respective rule of the 'mayors' of Kabul and Baghdad, Karsai and Maliki. The 'elections', held under the occupation of the invading forces, have done nothing to enable those who braved the U.S. generated violence and voted to effect any of the security, or basic tenets of citizenship, which should be assumed under a true democratic government. More often, these very voters have, themselves, come under attack from the forces of the government they've voted into power. Certainly, those communities whose residents have opposed the new regimes have been the targets of reprisals and suppression from government forces aided by the U.S..

Yet, the Bush regime would have us carry forward with the same false bravado of achievement they wave around behind the sacrifices of our soldiers, which has been repeated, over and over by the Bush regime, in the face of half a decade of bloody failure in the Middle East. Bush practically gushed with glee over the new, incoming manager of his dirty wars. "This has got to be an exciting time for Bob Gates," Bush said, before the new Defense chief was sworn in. "I can't tell you what an honor it is to be the Commander-in-Chief of unbelievably fine people. And I suspect he will share that same sense of enthusiasm as the Secretary of the Defense," he said.

Gates accepted the praise with the same qualifying language he used in front of the Senate committee, indicating his purpose in taking the job was less a enthusiasm than it was an assignment. "I return to public service in the hope that I can make a difference," Gates said after taking the oath.There has to be little comfort for Gates in his clean-up role; taking a hand-up from Bush to stand atop the rubble and humanity Bush and Rumsfeld have piled up since 2001. But, he did his best to blend into the mirage Bush has created to mask the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"All of us want to find a way to bring America's sons and daughters home again," Gates told those gathered. "But, as the President has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for decades to come."

If we "simply can't afford to fail," at the risk of a "calamity," then the worst is already upon us. Iraq and Afghanistan are utter failures which have provided resounding demonstrations of the limits of our overwhelming military forces in effecting the creation of democracies; "constitutional" or otherwise. If Gates is set to angle our over-extended forces to avoid losing in Iraq or Afghanistan, he'll find there's little that our military can do at this point to repair the damage and mistrust Bush and his predecessor's arrogant militarism has fostered, generated, and perpetuated among the residents of these occupied nations.

The only way anything will be 'won' in these countries is through an effort to actually engage the "hearts and minds" which were crushed under Bush's heavy-hand. Gates will learn -- voluntarily or not -- that, the more he pursues his military mission, the further away the reconciliation he claims to desire will become. If he intends to succeed in his new job, where Rumsfeld failed miserably, Gates will need to do more than just reorganize the pawns in Bush's cynical game. He'll have to argue for a rare rationality to whatever mission from Bush he's expected to hoist onto our soldiers' backs, and not merely settle for coronations and plaudits from his bankrupt commander.

Preemptive Warfare: Building a Consensus in favour of Israel's Nukes

Global Research, December 17, 2006

The so-called slip of the tongue that Israel has nuclear weapons by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has conveniently occurred after Robert Gates, the new U.S. defence secretary’s statement that Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Robert Gates' statement is part of a new foreign policy endeavor which purports not only to acknowledge but also to legitimize Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. The latter are slated to used on a preemptive basis in response to alleged Iranian threats directed against Israel. Although refuted by expert opinion, Iran is said to possess nuclear weapons capabilities.

Defence Secretary Gates also stated that the United States could not ensure Israel’s protection from potential Iranian nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Israel is claiming that it needs nuclear weapons to be used on a preemptive basis in response to the menace by Iran and its allies to allegedly liquidate it.

Public consensus is being slowly built in regards to Israeli weapons of mass destructions (WMDs). The admission regarding Israel's nuclear arsenal (almost simultanously by Washington and Tel Aviv) seems to be part of a carefully planned campaign to legitimize Israeli nuclear weapons as a necessary means of self-defense. These statements are also linked to a broader geopolitical and strategic project to create a “New Middle East,” controlled by the United States, Britain, and Israel in alliance with NATO.

Global Research, December 17, 2006
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ANNEX

Olmert's nuclear remark sign of weakness - Iran

Reuters

December 15, 2006

Iran said on Friday a remark by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, widely interpreted as an admission the Jewish state has nuclear weapons, was a sign of Israel's weakness.

Olmert, in a German TV interview shown on Monday, implied for the first time that his country had nuclear weapons. His aides quickly denied it constituted an admission or change of policy.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, visiting Kazakhstan, called on the world community to take action.

"Their prime minister has announced they have got nuclear arms. It does not show their strength. It shows their weakness. They are afraid," Mottaki told reporters in the Kazakh capital Astana.

"The international community should react to this in an appropriate way," he said.

Israel, which has accused Iran of having an atomic weapons programme, is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.

In his interview, Olmert said: "Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"

Independent analysts believe Israel has built between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads since the late 1960s. Israel refuses to discuss the matter, under an "ambiguity" policy aimed both at deterring regional foes and avoiding an arms race.

Copyright Reuters 2006

Goodness Gracious! The Truth! : MAUREEN DOWD - Gates Confirmation

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Goodness Gracious! The Truth!
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 6, 2006

In Iraq, the Bush administration has gone from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.

First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he’s frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.

The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.

That was the cold shower offered yesterday by Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. chief, on his way to being unanimously endorsed as the new defense secretary by a Senate panel craving a cold shower.

He told the Armed Services Committee, peppered with wannabe future presidents, that the American occupation could lead to a Baghdad as hostile as Tehran, and set off “a regional conflagration” if Iraq is not deftly handled in the next couple of years.
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